Per Modi-BJP's redefined nationalism, othering is pivotal; Hindus are now convinced that elitist former PMs have systematically discriminated in Muslims' favour
Chief of the Defence Staff, Anil Chauhan, speaks for the armed forces when says losses do not matter as long as Operation Sindoor achieved its objective. He might as well have been speaking for Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party a year after last year’s general elections.
Recall that at this time last year the BJP was staring at a parliament in which it had got barely 240 seats against the refrain of abki baar char sau paar. Worse, it had conceded primacy in parliamentary seats in karmabhoomi UP to the Samajwadi Party.
Now reflect on the lessons learnt from the election debacle. So, the Opposition sent Modi on the ropes in the first round but what happened in the second round in Haryana and then the third round in Maharashtra and the fourth round in Delhi?
Modi's mojo is back
A year later, who is up and prancing around the ring, taunting the opponent?
As more than one observer has commented, when Modi starts referencing to himself in the third person, he has his mojo back; and that’s what he has done in the spate of post-Sindoor public speeches.
Indeed, the way Modi has handled the Pahalgam massacre and the military operation is the stuff of statecraft out of Chanakya’s textbook.
Pahalgam happened not just because India has long had a neighbour in which the Deep State is committed to bleeding it by a thousand cuts; now even more ideologically committed under a zealot army chief. It equally happened because the establishment was busy selling the line that the revocation of Article 370 had resulted in all tourist attractions in Jammu and Kashmir being declared absolutely safe for tourists, for whom the presence of security forces would be irksome.
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Feeble attempts
Did the INDIA Bloc put the government on the back foot for a clear security lapse? It tried but its feeble attempts were easily thwarted. Partly because putting politics first at a time of national mourning is not good politics. Partly because the government’s formidable propaganda machine, aided by what has come to be referred as the 'godi media', soon drummed up the war cry of vengeance against terrorism from across the border, which drowned out all the other voices.
The irony is that the BJP enjoys a pole position in the Indian political firmament despite the fact that Modi has nothing new to say.
Some time ago, the astute political editor of The Print, DK Singh, had established how in all his speeches through last year’s state assembly elections and other recent political speeches, Modi was merely repeating what he had promised earlier. There were no new commitments and promises he was holding out. Not one.
Democrats and India
There are clear similarities between the challenges facing the Democratic party in the US and India’s Opposition parties. Though, to be fair, our Opposition parties display greater spunk in the thrust and weave of everyday politics than the down-and-out Democrats.
The most popular voice from their corner today — Ben Sanders — is not even a Democrat! Nevertheless, a recent column by David Brooks in The New York Times on the Democratic party’s challenges is revelatory in the echoes it rings for the Indian political stage.
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The challenge facing the Democratic party is that it has to “adapt to a new historical era”, Brooks declares perceptively. Trump is where he is, Brooks says, because he “tells a clear story: The elites are screwing America.”
A populist like Trump, Modi also tells a clear story.
Make India great again
This is how Modi and the RSS see their mission to Make India Great Again, as explained to me by somebody close to Modi and the RSS:
“India is, demographically, a Hindu majority state which for a thousand years has not had the gumption to call itself a Hindu state. Before Islam came to rule here, there were only Hindus here. To begin the long march to restore the status quo, the BJP will spare no effort to bring the nation’s 80 per cent Hindus under one umbrella culturally. To begin with, the objective is to to make the 14 per cent Muslims electorally insignificant.
"Hindus have been dominated for over for a thousand years. Over the next thousand years, all Hindus who had converted to Islam, voluntarily or otherwise, will see it in their own interests to do a ghar wapsi. Once it is clear to them that they have no bearing on how Indian democracy elects its leaders, how they have no agency in democracy India style, they will see the light.”
Cultural elitism
To go back to Brooks. “Cultural elitism is more oppressive than economic elitism. The populist era is driven by social resentment more than economic scarcity,” he notes.
Only social resentment can explain the fact that this country’s Hindus are increasingly convinced that the Indian state under non-BJP rulers post Independence, led by an elite out of touch with the country’s cultural and religious moorings, has systematically discriminated in favour of Indian Muslims.
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This, when repeated socio-economic surveys have established that as a community, only the country’s tribals are worse off than Muslims. Even the Scheduled Castes, sections of whom have cornered the reservations benefits, are better off than Indian Muslims.
Seeking new grand narrative
Democrats, writes Brooks, “have to do what Trump did: create a new party identity, come up with a clear answer to the question: What is the central problem of our time? Come up with a new grand narrative.”
The new grand narrative? Isn’t that what the non-BJP parties are struggling with in India? As a majoritarian party, the BJP has redefined Indian nationalism as something in which othering is pivotal.
This strand of Indian nationalism was always there as the country came to acquire a national consciousness and identity from the late 18th century onwards but the freedom movement made a brave attempt to paint a different narrative.
Enlightened viewpoint
As two of India’s finest political scientists, Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, have argued recently, it was a very “ambitious” attempt by the more cosmopolitan, modern and future-looking ideologues of the freedom movement to forge a nationalism which would reflect their enlightened viewpoint in a nation plagued with self-doubt and an inferiority complex, superstition and suspicion, and not the strident, jingoistic nationalism best expounded by Veer Savarkar.
In concluding his piece, Brooks asks: “Do you really think professional politicians are going to lead the tectonic shifts that are required? That takes intellectuals, organisers, a new generation, all of us. It’s the work of decades, not election cycles.”
Is Rahul Gandhi up to bringing about a tectonic shift and create an alternative grand narrative?
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
